


Wake Me When It's Cold In Summer

by angel921



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Death, Environment, Fantasy, Forests, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Mythology References, Plants, Science, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 01:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel921/pseuds/angel921
Summary: Lay wakes up in the middle of the forest he doesn't remember and the worst part is, there's a snake calculating his every move.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the Xingdae Fic Fest (Round 1) organized by Xingdae Café.  
Prompt #19045
> 
> A/N: I took this prompt and ran very very far with it...like exited this galaxy far

Waking up in strange places was becoming a habit for Lay. 

This time, he was under a canopy of trees so tall, the few rays of sunlight peeking through appeared green. Sweat dribbled from his curly mop of hair as he craned his neck, observing everything in a wave of delirium. Without a single gust of wind to stir the air, everything hung limp and deathly still. A river dark as midnight snaked around the edge of the forest, trapping him in a place that was neither here nor there. 

Maybe this is what people meant when they referred to the middle of nowhere. 

He couldn’t remember how he’d wandered so far from the rest of the class. It was his last semester of _ Plants and Other Botanical Thingamajigs That Can Kill You, _and he was trapped in a pit. It was as deep as he was tall with an army of mosquitoes and a relentless bee buzzing around his head. The way things were going, he figured he'd be stuck at university for an extra year—again. 

It wasn’t entirely his fault. Lay, always the curious one, had followed the sound of laughter and ended up somewhere too far. That melodic bell-like sound was ringing in his ears even now, as it had been for the past week but no one else seemed to hear it. He knew there was something peculiar going on but even his sharp professor turned a blind eye. Her lectures droned on in the scorching heat and their arduous surveyal of poisonous botany continued without a single mention of strange phenomena. 

Lay, as most scientists and botanists-in-training are, had always been the pragmatic thinking sort. To him the natural world was comprised of tangible entities and there existed laws and theorems to reinforce those things that could not be seen. Nothing about him suggested belief in the supernatural but after spending two merciless days starved and half delirious he'd been to the veritable notion that 1) no one knew the terrain well enough to pull a prank on him and 2) this particular forest was uninhabited save for fifteen very sweaty grad students and an eccentric professor. So until he had reason to believe otherwise, the laughter would belong to a ghost. 

Perhaps it had lured him into a trap to strip him of skepticism. 

He began to mumble prayers his dear old grandmother used to say at his bedside when he drank too much milk and complained of bad dreams or when knobby tree branches reached through a window to scratch the walls. Her sharp mountain dialect rolled off his tongue, dulled by years of disuse but he hoped it was more than enough to appease whatever was most probably haunting him. 

The prayers stopped abruptly when something rustled the leaves lying a few meters from his pit. Every ounce of color drained from his tanned face when he finally identified the source of the noise. 

His heart jumped into his throat. 

It was a Bleeding Garnet, the first one he had ever seen outside of field guides in the university library. It had gleaming silver eyes and a pattern of scales in brilliant tones of pink and blue. He would have appreciated its beauty if not for the grim reality that the species was horrifyingly poisonous and not native to the forest. It was a long ways from home and most likely famished as a result. 

One bite and his vessels would dilate, he would swell up, and the rest would be history.

Lay squirmed, clawing at the hard dirt encasing him with his fingernails. He was trying everything in his power to wriggle his way out of the pit but his attempts were unsuccessful. His head jerked violently to the side and the creature eyed him with an interest it hadn’t shown before. The Garnet lowered its head and a long, forked tongue slowly pushed through the notch in its bottom lip. 

_ That’s it. I’m gonna fucking die. The ghosts won’t even look for my corpse because it’ll be so fucked up. _

_ " _Oh you'll die, alright, but only if you don't get out of that pit. Starvation in the middle of summer is no fun, trust me," said a smooth, deep voice. 

Lay turned (as best he could while stuck in a hole). There was not a single soul aside from his own, and even that one was quickly running out of time. 

"W-who-"

"Over here, Human. There's no one behind you." 

Lay's eyes doubled in size. The snake, a creature not particularly known for its chattiness, was looking directly at him and speaking. 

“H-how are you doing that?”

The Garnet slithered closer. “Doing what?”

“The t-talking thing. I mean, snakes aren’t supposed to talk and oh my God I’m having a conversation with a fucking reptile.”

The Garnet was now a mere few inches from his face. Up close, its silver eyes possessed an iridescent quality that was downright mesmerizing. The creature was gazing at him as though it could see into every crevice of his soul. Perhaps it was out of fear, but for a moment, Lay felt his vision fade in and out and then, slowly, an obscure face appeared, floating in the darkness like the Cheshire of wonderland. He couldn’t decide which one, the snake or the visage, was a facade. 

“Of course we can talk. You humans don’t know how to listen when your interests aren’t involved,” the snake said, its tongue flickering. 

“What kind of shit are you trying to pull, huh? Waiting for me to kick the bucket so you can have dinner?” 

Lay felt terribly sick, near death even. It was more than just the lack of food and water for a questionable number of days. It was the radiating heat boiling his skin. It was the waves of laughter ebbing in and out of his subconscious brain, his inability to locate its source driving him to the brink of madness. It was the bee that wouldn’t stop buzzing around his head.

It was the snake that hardly resembled a snake. 

His eyelids began to droop as a combination of shock and fatigue claimed his body. The crown of his head rocked forward, straining the already sore muscles of his neck. He raised his head to take one last, bleary-eyed glance at the snake and smirked when a hand reached out to him.

_ I knew you weren’t a fucking snake. _

The Garnet, no longer a brilliant body of blue-pink scales, cast the shadow of a man, small in stature with soft features and wide, calculating eyes. He crouched above the hole where Lay had gone unconscious and held both palms to the dry ground. Something deep within the surface of the earth rumbled profoundly, like the final moments of calm before the eruption of a volcano. There was an ear-splitting crack as a deep rift divided the forest. With his prison split in two, Lay’s body rolled into a cavity lined with shattered stones. 

The young man lunged forward, gripping the underside of his arms to carefully lift him out of the rubble. Cuts littered his arms and legs and blood trickled from a fresh wound on his forehead, but he was alive. In one swift motion, he shifted Lay onto his back and bent down once again to touch the ground. The earth reverted to its original state, the forest becoming eerily still as though nothing had ever disturbed its tranquility in the first place. With a triumphant nod of his head he then bent over slightly, tightened his grip on Lay, and turned towards the East. Beyond the clearing of the forest a long valley stretched as far as the eye could see. He would take the human there, into the shadow of the mountain, where the rest of its inhabitants would decide what to do next.

_ “You were stuck in that hole for almost two days. What makes you think I’d want to eat you when you’re filthy and smell just as awful as you look? And besides, he'd probably have my head on a stake if anything happened to you.” _Kyungsoo thought grimly.

It was to be a long journey back home and carrying someone on your back was the least enjoyable way to endure it, but what Jongdae wants, Jongdae gets. He just couldn’t understand why it had to be a human, of all creatures. 


	2. II

Throwing an unconscious human into a frozen lake was a senseless thing to do. Kyungsoo realized this thirty seconds into counting how long Lay had been underwater wearing nothing but a pair of briefs the latter had spared him. In his defense, Kyungsoo had felt rather despondent after reaching the edge of the Forest and receiving the nasty surprise that everything was buried in ice and snow. A bitter frost, unlike one he'd ever been subject to, had descended upon his homeplace. Snow wet his stolen trousers up to the knee and the sandals he'd yanked from Lay' s feet were little more than blocks of ice. They were hardly ten miles from where he'd found the human and yet the weather had changed so drastically that he knew it would be unbearable for the Bleeding Garnet.

He didn't mind as much as he should have. The opportunity to be in his human form seldom came. It was a wonder he remembered how to use his limbs.

39, 40, 41...Kyungsoo murmured under his breath. Once the count reached 60, he'd have to dive in and he certainly didn't want to do that. Cold blooded or not, he despised low temperatures. They did little to alleviate his dry skin.

At count 58, the water rippled. At 59 Kyungsoo saw a pale hand break the surface. At 60, an entire body glided through the air like a flying fish, landing with a loud thud by his feet. Lay curled himself into a ball and groaned piteously.

"Get up, human. There isn't much time left."

"You again? Wha- my clothes, dude come on! And why the fuck is it so cold?"

"You're rambling and yes I took your disgusting, hideous clothes. As you can see, it is cold here and I am half reptile. It's not in my nature to apologize but I can spare one if it will somehow give you comfort." Kyungsoo mumbled. He bent over, placing both palms on the ground and waited patiently for Lay to climb on.

"Dude, what are you doing? This isn't the time to play frog jump!"

"I am going to ignore whatever insult you just hurled at me because we are running out of time."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Look around you. What do you see?"

Lay shivered, "I don't know...ice? Look man, I don't feel like playing I Spy with you. Get to the point."

"Don't you find any of this strange? It's the 7th month of the year, there shouldn't be anything but sunlight."

"That's global warming for you."

Kyungsoo straightened himself to full height, which, mind you, was just shy of 170 cm, and glared at Lay with as much venom as he could muster.

"No."

"Who's the scientist here, you or me? The weather patterns have been off the charts lately. It's climate change, buddy."

"You're wrong."

"I have a degree in Ecology that says you're the clown here but okay. If it isn't the carbon footprint, then what is it?"

"Jongdae is sick."

Lay blinked. Kyungsoo blinked back at him and they stood that way, each one blinking furiously until an uproarious laughter burst out of Lay.

"You can't be serious."

"I don't like jokes."

"So you're telling me one guy has a runny nose and now the whole ecosystem of the forest is fucked up?"

"You are not taking this seriously."

"So I'm the one not taking things seriously. You're the one that kidnapped me, stole my fucking clothes and now you're trying to badly teach me something I spent years busting my ass over? What are you in a cult or something? You guys short on members?"

Lay was more than a little agitated. He was livid. His body shook vigorously from head to toe. White puffs of vapor spouted from his lips as he stood before Kyungsoo, nostrils flaring. He wanted his clothing back. He wanted to throw Kyungsoo into the lake, but most of all he wanted to return to his cozy apartment in the city. To hell with graduate school research. He would learn to be content as a park ranger showing dried beans and dead butterflies to drooling children.

"I nearly forgot how stubborn you humans are," Kyungsoo said with a scoff. "Forget what I've told you'll see for yourself."

"I ain't goin anywhere till you give me back my clothes."

Kyungsoo gripped the collar of his stolen shirt, "I need this. Without it my blood will freeze." 

"You're that snake from earlier, aren't you? Just poof back and you can hide in my shirt," Lay replied, nonchalantly waving his fingers.

Kyungsoo paled. "That idea sounds...vile."

"What's vile is that you're a kidnapping thief with serious delusions about the world."

Kyungsoo felt the urge to argue that he was none of those things and that Lay was an insolent bastard for saying so, but Jongdae's life was on the line. He had little agency in the matter so he held his tongue and shifted without a word.

After what seemed like an eternity (in human or snake time, for that matter), Kyungsoo found himself coiled around Lay's stomach. The human murmured something about suicide and then poked at his midsection to alert him that he was waiting for guidance.

"Head towards that clearing and walk straight into the cypress tree. If the purification was successful, the forest will grant you passage."

"You want me to run into a tree?"

"Yes," Kyungsoo hissed. "Don't even think about doing something else or I'll bite you with every lethal dose of venom I have."

  
  



	3. III

In all her millennia of guarding the treegate, never did Taeyeon think she would witness a human come through its bark, at least not a creature that was entirely human. Granted, she had known Lay was coming, but she was by no means prepared for his arrival.

"Where is Kyungsoo?" She asked.

Lay stumbled backwards when she sliced through the air in front of his midsection with a dagger. It was a smooth blade fashioned of silver and encrusted with jade towards the hilt, well suited to its master who was equally as deadly as she was an elven beauty.

"Watch how you're swinging that thing. You're gonna take someone's eye out!" He exclaimed.

"Your eyes or my head?" Kyungsoo said. Lay untucked his t-shirt from his shorts and out tumbled the blue-pink snake, iridescent eyes glimmering in interest as Taeyeon bent down to collect him. He burrowed into the sleeve of her fur coat until only his head was visible through the garment.

"This is the healer? The one you had me digging in the dirt for 3 hours to trap?" Taeyeon sneered. 

"Lets not forget that I had to poison his food," Kyungsoo replied smugly.

_I thought I was hearing things. That fucker drugged me. I should-_

Lay looked on in grave silence as they discussed his kidnapping as if it was nothing more than tea conversation. Now it more than the cold making him feel numb. Two strangers had plotted against him and he had fallen right into their hands.

"If you're going to kill me, can it wait until after I get my degree? I worked hard for that shit," Lay mumbled.

Taeyeon scoffed, "Kill you? Unlike you humans, we're not barbarians. But if we were to kill you," she said, flipping her dagger and then catching it expertly by the blade, "there's no one better to do it than an elf."

"We have bigger things to worry about than your parasitic species," Kyungsoo said.

"Oh yeah, like your sick wizard who can change the weather, right?"

Taeyeon raised her sleeve and peered inside. To an outsider, she would have looked rather silly speaking to her furry arm but that was the least of her concerns.

"You told him Jongdae was a wizard?" She asked coolly.

"N-no he just assumed. You know how idiotic their kind can be," Kyungsoo stammered.

Taeyeon pointed her dagger at Lay again. "He's no wizard and he's not changing the weather. He's a naiad, stupid human," she said jabbing her knife maniacally, "that's a water spirit, and something in our rivers is making him ill and now everything around us is dying."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You've got the mark of a healer on your palm. Jongdae sent me to look for a healer with the mark of a plant, and you were the only one fitting of the description," Kyungsoo said.

Lay held up his right hand, "You mean this? That's a fucking birthmark you idiot! And who the hell said it was a plant?"

"Let me see it," Taeyeon said, yanking the collar of his shirt to bring him closer. Lay noted that she smelled sweetly of jasmine, a flower, he learned after much trekking, was native to the area.

"I mean I guess if you squint a little maybe..." She released his hand with a sigh, "Oh, I don't know. But the last healer, that sweet old human, she had the mark as well. We just thought...or maybe we hoped you'd be one too."

Lay glanced up then and looked directly into her eyes for the first time since they'd met. They were a soft shade of amber with flecks of gold and even a cloud of sea green in her right iris. They presented her vibrantly as a creature full of life, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was desperation in the way she looked back at him. Her eyes were pleading with him to do something. What exactly, he wasn't sure.

"Healer or not, he's a scientist. He can still help us," Kyungsoo said.

"Look, I'm an ecologist who happens to know a thing or two about plants. What you need is a doctor or like a medicine woman or something. You guys don't have anything like that?"

"Taeyeon already said everything is dying," Kyungsoo snapped. We're all that's left...in this forest anyway."

"You mean there's only three of you here, in this whole fucking forest? But that's impossible."

"It's entirely possible because you humans never pay attention. You've managed to kill hordes of other creatures on earth." Kyungsoo said. Lay was tempted to make a quip about his little tirade but he decided against it.

"This didn't happen overnight, you know. He's been sick for 21 years," Taeyeon added softly. "We've seen so much devastation."

Lay sighed. There wasn't a thing he could do to change their dire circumstances for the better. He wasn't a doctor a healer or medicine man. He could list every nightshade from the tomato to the deadly _ Atropa belladonna _ and explain cellular respiration in terms dim-witted tourists could understand. Curing whatever was plaguing the naiad for two decades, however, was a stretch and he wasn't afraid to admit it.

"I'll take a look at him but I'm warning you now that I probably won't be able to help him."

"You're our last hope, human. Don't make me regret placing my faith in you," Kyungsoo said.

"Stop calling me human,_ Snake_. My name is Lay."

Taeyeon smirked, "Oh we know everything about you."

"Of course you do," Lay replied weakly.

"Jongdae told us."


	4. IV

It wasn't long before Lay realized his preconceptions of just about everything were a far cry from reality.

He had expected to encounter some ancient sage, weathered by the elements, and possibly foaming at the mouth. He had expected to walk into Jongdae's home or cave or cardboard box to find a shriveled prune or a stick-like thing but Jongdae was none of those things.

Not even close.

They found the naiad in a pond miraculously untouched by the frost in spite of the bitter cold. He was a small, dainty creature with pale skin and a trail of moles running like constellations from his face down to his neck. Small black waves brushed the nape of his neck. The strands were woven with all sorts of items from the river: a few shells, underwater plants, and ever a few pebbles.

To all three of the creatures standing in his vicinity, he was a spectacle to behold. Mesmerizing. Ethereal. Jongdae.

Lay pushed up the sleeve of a coat Taeyeon had lent him from her trove and reached out to the creature. His hand trembled when the curious thing swam out and took hold of his longest finger as if to inspect it. He froze when the naiad looked straight into his eyes with a starry-eyed gaze.

Lay had seen that emerald green before.

He remembered it glowing from a place deep, and dark, and so terribly cold, the memory chilled him down to his very bones.

Lay shut his eyes and he saw his dear old grandmother's home and the river that snaked behind it. He saw his father and an ax and then he saw blood everywhere. Grandmother was lying in the kitchen again, telling him to run away. He saw her plants wither as soon as she closed her eyes. Then all of a sudden he couldn't see, he could only feel the blinding cold river and a hand reaching in the dark for his own curled fist.

"You're finally here," Jongdae said. The corners of his lips turned upwards into a cat-lipped smile that relaxed Lay's tense muscles.

"Why do I feel like we're meeting after a long time?" Lay mumbled.

Jongdae cocked an eyebrow, "I saved your life, child," he said coyly.

Lay scoffed, "That was years ago. Don't call me that."

"Ah, but to me you are. I've been alive for eons, you know."

"Yeah? And here you are, making a big deal out of a little head cold and freezing shit and killing all your damn friends."

Jongdae cast a perplexed glance at Kyungsoo and Taeyeon but the two refused to meet eyes.

"Is that what my friends told you? That I'm the reason they're all gone?"

"Uh yeah, so um do me a favor and say ahhh with your tongue sticking out," Lay said.

Jongdae remained still. "Lay. There is something wrong with our forest. It has been home since time immemorial and now its killing us one by one. I'm not sick. The forest is dying." 

"Whoa man. These two friends of yours brought me all this way so I could figure out what's wrong with you, not the whole damn ecosystem. That's not my responsibility."

"Then who will do it? There are only three of us left. My rivers taste of poison. The trees are burning. Your kind bring yellow dragons made of steel to tear up the earth. This forest was paradise, now it's a frozen graveyard," Jongdae replied sadly. 

Sometimes, all it takes for life to take a dramatic turn is to look at the entire ordeal from a different vantage point. Lay had been taught by his grandmother to respect the Forest and give love to its plants, so naturally, he'd gone the way of many a nature-lover and earned a degree in the life sciences. But what good is a degree if one sits in an air conditioned office binging Netflix between shifts? An entire ecosystem had been disappearing in his backyard while he was fashioning snakes and so-called sticks out of balloon animals. What was already lost could never be recovered but Lay had the knowledge at least to protect what remained.

He dusted his hands onto the coat and smiled warmly at the naiad. Then he reached out his hand and grasped Jongdae's hand like he had done so many years before. The latter rose slowly from the watery depths, exposing his bare shoulders to the chill that hung in the air.

"I'll fix your forest on one condition: all three of you have to help me. This isn't a one-man job, we'll need lots more recruits actually."

"You means those louts you came here with?" Kyungsoo asked. His tone was heavy, as if the suggestion deeply disinterested him.

"Oh no, I mean like entire teams of people, cities even. You told me humans never pay attention, and you're right, we don't. So let's give everyone a reason to look this way."

Jongdae beamed up him and Lay couldn't help but smile back.

"Are you sure about this?" He asked. Lay noticed that his brows knitted themselves together in two angles lines.

"It sounds like a lifetime of work to me," Taeyeon huffed.

"It just might be," Lay said, "but I owe him my life anyway."


End file.
